8
CapitalPress.com
August 21, 2015
Nursery grows its own natural, edible plants
By LACEY JARRELL
For the Capital Press
BONANZA, Ore. — Edible
native plants can be an attrac-
tive option for residential land-
scaping, according to Southern
Oregon growers.
Owners of Rock Bottom
Ranch Koi & Nursery in Bo-
nanza, Ore., focus on hardy
native plants for rugged Great
Basin, high-desert conditions.
“The Great Basin extends
throughout all the sand states.
We’re dealing with low precip-
itation, high elevation and tem-
perature extremes,” said former
nursery owner Annie Sedlacek.
Earlier this year, Sedlacek,
and her husband Leslie, sold
the native plant nursery to Bob
and Pat Clickener, but the cou-
ple is staying on to help the
Clickeners acclimate to the
nursery setting.
Rock Bottom features
a wide array of native and
drought-tolerant plants. Elder-
berries, golden currants and
serviceberry are just a few of
the decorative native Oregon
edibles customers can pick up
there.
“They are beautiful land-
scape plants, and they are really
useful for wildlife and birds,”
Sedlacek said.
According to Sedlacek, in
addition to providing a nu-
tritious return on investment,
native edibles tempered to spe-
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don’t require added fertilizers
or maintenance.
“If you can have a beautiful
native plant that can feed your
family and shelter wildlife —
plus keep your landscape less
expensive to maintain — why
Lacey Jarrell/For the Capital Press
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to Southern Oregon, at Rock Bottom Ranch Koi & Nursery. The Bonanza,
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would you select a different
plant?”
She said nearly every Rock
Bottom plant is propagated
outdoors to ensure it has the
moxie it needs to survive the
region’s hot dry summers and
bone-chilling winters.
“We don’t believe our cus-
tomers have the time or re-
sources to fool with plants that
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said. “It’s get tough or die in
this environment.”
Buyers should think about
what they want their plants
to do, such as provide shade
or stabilize the soil, and how
much time they want to spend
maintaining the landscape, Pat
said. She noted that landown-
ers should also consider how
much landscape they want to
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suitability.
“It looks much more attrac-
tive to cluster plants,” Pat said.
She offered yellow or purple
ninebark and red twig and yel-
low dogwood bushes as exam-
ples of non-edible, native Rock
Bottom plants that can spruce
up landscapes.
“I love the structure of
them,” she said. “Not just how
beautiful they are during the
summer, but how much they
add to your landscape during
the winter. When it’s barren ev-
erywhere else, they add color to
a neutral landscape.”
Rock Bottom’s plants are
propagated from cuttings or
from seed and few, if any, are
greenhouse-grown, according
to Sedlacek.
“The goal is to grow things
outside in as natural a form as
possible,” she said.
Most plants native to
Southern Oregon need to be
planted in fall and go through
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a natural treatment that weak-
ens the seed coat and promotes
germination.
August 21, 2015
CapitalPress.com 9
Secretary transitions from hobbyist to nursery owner
By ERICK PETERSON
For the Capital Press
COWICHE, Wash. —
Cowiche Creek Nursery is a
hobby that grew out of con-
trol, according to Jeannie
Stephens, who owns the busi-
ness with her husband, Mark.
“We’ve been around for
awhile; things started and
they just kept going,” she
said.
In the late 1980s, she was
working as a school secre-
tary and gardening in her free
WLPH6KHOLNHGPDNLQJÀRZ-
er baskets, she said, and she
was doing it more and more.
It became an increasingly
large part of her life, and she
would research new ideas by
traveling to nurseries out of
town and poring over garden-
ing magazines.
She made baskets and be-
came so productive that she
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she had space. So she gave
several away to friends.
A buzz started growing
about her baskets, and people
started offering her money
for them. Friends, acquain-
tances and strangers were
placing orders, she said.
“There were people who
were coming to my front
door,” she said. They had no
idea whether she had a busi-
ness, only that they admired
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displayed in front of her
home. They asked her where
they could buy these baskets.
By 1989, with the help of
her husband, a profession-
al agricultural advisor who
built her a greenhouse and
offered his expertise in soils,
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Erick Peterson/For the Capital Press
Serena Gillespie and Jeannie Stephens, of Cowiche Creek
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business.
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job with limited hours, her
nursery took off immedi-
ately. As her customer base
grew, she was able to devote
more hours to the nursery.
In time, this job became her
main employment, and then
it garnered so much business
that she could quit her secre-
tary job.
This was a big moment for
her, she said, as being able to
leave secretary work was a
sign that she had “made it”
as a nursery professional.
Further, she was able to look
over her inventory, which
includes annuals, geraniums
and roses, and she could ap-
preciate her own work. She
has done well, she said.
Other people agree; cus-
tomers keep returning.
Nowadays, she busies
herself with sales, tending
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ing the business. Business is
still, good, she said, and she
has been able to deal with the
increasing prices of materials
by growing nearly all of her
inventory.
More than simply suc-
cessful, nursery ownership is
pleasant and rewarding, she
said. At the same time, how-
ever, it is demanding. She
complains about the physical
toll on her body, and she says
that she is already growing
too old to continue much lon-
ger.
Fortunate for her, and her
loyal customers, she said, she
has a succession plan.
Daughter Serena Gilles-
pie is already working at
Cowiche Creek Nursery as
manager. She said that she
is learning much from her
mother, and, she is accept-
ing more and more respon-
sibilities at the nursery. In
time, she will be running the
place, which will leave her
mom free to retire.
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